The Konoha Tunnels Mystery
by HintOfAWhisper
Summary: Sakura explores the old tunnels under Konoha on Halloween. They are believed to be haunted but Sakura won't give into the stories so easily. A Halloween FanFiction.
1. Ghost

Sakura darted down a crowded street. Everyone was out and buzzing getting ready for Halloween. The air had a nice crisp Fall feeling to it. She could almost taste the sweets and pumpkin pies as she breathed in deeply.

She was on a mission though and had to focus on it. A mission was a mission after all, no matter how small or simple it was. Focusing to figure out the quickest way through the packed crowd Sakura pushed chakra into her feet to go even faster. Now she was beginning to wish she would of just leaped from building top to building top instead of trying to navigate through this mess.

Her mission was to deliver a box to Tsunade at her office and Sakura was already running a little late. You couldn't blame her though. The only way a person could run past one of those fresh hot pumpkin pies in the window was if they were not human.

The box was light weight and had a big black and orange bow tied around it. Obviously the person who wrapped the box up was in the Halloween spirit. She kept a firm grip on the small box. Not knowing what was inside it she decided it would be best to treat it like it was of great value and was very fragile so it should be handled with great care. Whatever was in the box though, rattled around as she ran and sounded like it could be beads or something like that.

The trees were Sakura's favorite park of this time of year. They're branches reached out over the streets like a friendly umbrella. The colors were like heaven. So many different shades of orange, yellow, red and even a little brown, they all came together to form a beautiful collage. Many people passed the trees everyday and never took notice in them, but Sakura tried to always take notice in all the little things around her.

Every street had pumpkins everywhere. Stacks of them against the walls, piles of them at street corners and one on every doorstep. Each looked different from the others, not one exactly the same. Some of them had already been carved into smiling Jack-O-Lanterns. Sakura loved the little pumpkins the best. They were small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, but they would never be carved because of their size. The bigger pumpkins rotted quickly but the little pumpkins could make it to Thanksgiving easy without a bad spot on the.

Finally Sakura reached the Hokage's building. She walked in the front door and waved at a few familiar faces by the front desk then ran up the stairs to her office. Knocking on the door it slowly swung open. There in her desk was Tsunade. She smiled at Sakura and motioned for her to walk over to her. Sakura walked in and gently laid the package on the desk in front of Tsunade.

"Good work Sakura. I have been looking forward to this all day" said Tsunade.

Slowly Tsunade undid the ribbon that tied the box together. Sakura waited anxiously waiting to see what she had been protecting so heavily all the way through Konaha. Tsunade quickly ripped the orange paper off and tossed it into a waste basket at the other end of the room. Sakura's eyes grow wide as Tsunade opened the package and pulled out the object it contained.

"CANDYCORN?!?!?!?" Sakura shouted. "You made me go through all that for a small bag of candycorn?"

"I know it seems silly but it is my favorite Halloween candy and it's only good if you get it while it's still fresh. The stuff they sell at the store is three or four years old." Tsunade added while popping a piece in her mouth.

"I just wish you would have told me…I treated that candy like it was gold or something" Sakura mumbled.

"Oh so you are saying my candy is not important eh?" said Tsunade with a grin on her face.

"Well come on its just ca…" and before Sakura could finish her sentence Tsunade had popped a piece of candycorn into Sakura's mouth.

The candycorn was one of the best things Sakura had ever tasted but she was too frustrated to admit that. She just stood there with a man look on her face eating the candy. Tsunade smiled at the look on Sakura's face for a minute.

"Oh that reminds me Sakura. I need one more thing before you can be on your way. I need you to get a few boxes of those decorations out of the basement for the festival tonight."

Sakura nodded and sighed. She never was very fond of the _basement_. She walked out the door and down the hallway to the stairs. The basement wasn't even really a basement at all. It was built long before she was born as a hiding place if the village was under a serious attack. Hundreds of people could fit down there while the ninjas fought on the ground above. Since then the tunnels now known as the basement had fallen in at several places and were not really safe to be in. A few of the tunnels were still safe though. In these tunnels many things that were not used much were put away into storing.

She had only been down in them a few times and was always hesitant to go down even when ordered. As a child there were stories that the tunnels had caved in once and killed a young girl playing in them. When Sakura grow into a young woman though she just figured it was another one of those stories to get children to do what adults wanted. Like the boogie man making kids stay in their beds at night the tunnel stories must have been made to keep kids out of them.

Hurrying down the stairs to the basement Sakura felt almost like someone was watching her. Quickly she dismissed it and focused on getting the boxes and getting out as quickly as possible. The walls were stone and the floors where cement. A lantern was Sakura's only source of light and she looked carefully were she stepped afraid that she might come across a rat.

She reached the end of the tunnel and there just as hoped were the boxes. She bent over to pick them up and a whoosh of wind blow through her hair and lifted up her pink shirt. Quickly she turned around shocked. Where had the wind come from? She had closed the door when she entered the tunnels, and even if the wind had come from the doorway the wind had come in from the wrong direction.

Sakura looked at the direction that the wind had come from. The wind had come from a dark tunnel that was marked off with yellow caution tape. Sakura couldn't even remember seeing that when she had come in. She would have seen it surly, yet there it was. Lifting up the lantern to get a better look inside she saw that the tunnel led to a dead end where the tunnel had caved in.

The memory of the old stories of the cave came back to her as she looked down the dark tunnel. Maybe they were true. Maybe they weren't just made up. Maybe, just maybe, Sakura wasn't alone in the tunnels.

Leaving the boxes behind Sakura slowly tip-toed her way past the yellow caution tape and into the tunnel that the wind had come from. Water dripped from the ceiling and the floor was covered in a weird green moss like plant. The whole tunnel had the smell of mildew and old air. No one must have been down there in years by the way everything looked. At the end of the tunnel was the wall of rocks that must of collapsed years ago.

Everything about the tunnel made the hair on the back of Sakura's neck stand up. There was no sign of where the wind had come from. She was about ready to get out of there when she heard something behind her.

Slowly and Sakura turned around. Her eyes grow huge, her skin turned pale, and she froze from fear. There in the opening that Sakura had come through to get into the tunnel was a young girl. Her hair was white and floating around her. She wore a long worn out white dress that flowed around her ankles. Sakura could not see her face, only her bright blue glowing eyes. The weirdest part of the whole thing, was that the girl was floating a foot in the air staring at Sakura.

A bright light surrounded the girl and a mist swirled around her feet. She had no shoes on but a teddy bear in her right hand.

That's when it hit Sakura. This was the ghost of the girl from the old stories. She really had existed and was right in front of Sakura's very own eyes. Sakura let out a long loud scream and darted past the girl out the tunnel and up the stairs to Tsunade's office.

**I wrote this short FanFiction about Sakura for Halloween. It is not my best but I wanted to have something out for one of my favorite Holidays. I will write one more chapter and will probably have it up either in an hour or in the morning. Happy Halloween everyone. Please leave reviews if you can.**

**~Whispers **


	2. The Rose Box

The door of Tsunade's office flew open and Sakura ran in pale and out of breath.

"Sakura you look like you just saw a ghost" said Tsunade.

Trembling Sakura walked over to Tsunade's desk. She told Tsunade exactly what had happened to her while she was in the tunnels. The Hokage just starred at Sakura for a moment taking in everything she had said. Sakura didn't want to wait for her to process the information so she grabbed Tsunade's hand and dragged her down to the basement.

Slowly walking down the main tunnel with only a lantern to guide their way they reached the place where Sakura had entered the haunted tunnel. Tsunade looked around confused and turned to Sakura.

"Where did you say you went in again?" she said.

In shock Sakura starred at a pile of rocks that blocked the entrance to the tunnel. There was a layer of dust of the rocks and the way they had settled into each other it looked like they had been there for 100 years. There was no way to get into the tunnel and there was no sign of the floating girl Sakura had seen before.

"But I know she was there Tsunade, I swear."

Tsunade walked over to the entranced to the collapsed tunnel sand ran her hands over some of the rocks. She looked around to see if there were any other openings to tunnels but there were none. There was a breeze coming from the cracks between the rocks but other than that it looked like no one had gone into or came out of the tunnel in years.

Tsunade turned around to look at Sakura. "I do not know what is going on here and if I didn't know better I would have thought you dragged me down here just to get back at me for the candycorn thing. I do know that I have no memory of ever seeing this opening before, even when it was blocked off by these rocks. I don't know how to explain how it got here because it isn't on any of the new maps of the tunnels. I do not doubt what you said you saw though. I too have heard the stories of the little girl that perished down here so many years ago. Till now I never believed it." Tsunade said.

Sakura starred at the wall of rocks and sighed. "What do we do now?"

"Well these tunnels are no longer safe to be in. They look like they could cave in at any moment. I say we get the boxes and get out of here. I will tell a few ninjas to block off all entrances to them. I don't want to hear about anymore ghosts. Oh and Sakura, whatever you did see down here, is just between you and me. If people here about this, they will all want to come down here to look for the ghost and I don't want to risk anyone getting hurt down here."

Sakura nodded and picked up a stack of boxes and began to make her way out of the tunnel. Tsunade did the same after looking at the collapsed tunnel one last time.

When they were both out of the tunnel Tsunade put a lock on the door to the basement. She didn't want to risk anyone going down there. Sakura and Tsunade put the boxes on Tsunade's desk and began to go through them. They were filled with Halloween decorations. Sakura smiled as she pulled out a string or orange lights.

They were almost finished picking out what would be put up that night when Sakura found a little wooden carved box in the bottom of one of the boxes. She pulled it out and handed it over to Tsunade.

"What do you think it is?" asked Sakura.

Tsunade examined it closely and found a small latch on the front of it. She opened up the box to find a silver bracelet and a hand written letter in it. The letter looked like it must have been in the box for over 50 years. The box was beautifully carved with a elaborate rose carving on the top. The bracelet was real silver and almost had little roses that were imprinted all over it.

The Hokage began to read the letter out loud.

_Dear Father_

_I love you so very much. I am sorry that I ruined your history book. I wish that I could be perfect. I miss momma very much and I haven't been able to get over her not being there to tuck me in at night. I know that's it's been hard for you since momma died a month ago. You are always sad and never smile at me the way you used to. Daddy I love you and I want you to know you're not alone. Even though momma is gone I am still here for you. I also wanted to tell you that since momma died I have stopped going over to Nozomi's after school. It is just too hard to put up with all of the questions that she asks. I can't blame her though she doesn't know anything about death and has never lost anyone close to her. Instead of going I have been hiding out in the fall out tunnels. I know it's against the rules and probably dangerous but it's just nice to have time to be alone and cry sometimes. Daddy I know that you haven't cried yet about momma. I think that you should stop trying to be strong and cry. It will make you feel better. I will always love you. _

_Sincerely, your loving daughter, Niwa_

Sakura and Tsunade said there in silence for a moment. Now they knew what must of happened to poor Niwa. Sakura felt like she was going to cry because of how sad the letter was. She had to do something to help poor Niwa. The question was how though. Niwa was already long dead. Sakura slipped the silver bracelet onto her wrist and looked over to Tsunade.

"Tsunade, what do you think happened to the father?" asked Sakura.

"I don't know. The date on this letter is old, but he could still be alive. Let me go check the records and see if I can find anything on a Niwa" said Tsunade.

**

* * *

Ok so one more chapter and I will be finished with this. I know I planned to do two but sometimes things work out differently than you plan. Chapter 3 will be out later this afternoon. Happy Halloween Everyone. Please Review!**

**~Whispers**


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